← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Happier with Dan Harris
For the Burned Out, Overcommitted, and Perpetually Drained | Robin Arzón
00:56:08
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Robin Arzon
foreign
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Dan Harris
welcome to the ten percent happier podcast i'm your host dan harris we are in the middle of an excellent series this week called get fit sanely where we talk about how to take care of your body without losing your mind and this series is sponsored by our friends over at buy optimizers bioptimizers make a product called magnesium breakthrough which they say delivers better sleep calmer days and more energy definitely want to give a big thanks to the folks over at bioptimizers you'll be hearing much more about magnesium breakthrough later in today's episode today my guest is going to be talking about hustle this is a loaded word i know a lot of people hear the word hustle and they think they're going to be told to push themselves beyond their capacity aim for standards that are impossible both professionally and personally but my guest is actually trying to retake the word hustle and she's doing so in ways that i actually find quite convincing said guest is robin arzon who is vice president of fitness programming and head instructor at peloton she's a twenty seven time marathon and ultra marathon runner a three time new york times bestselling author and the founder of the swagger society she also hosts a podcast of her own called project swagger so today we're going to talk about hustle without burnout how to rewire your self talk and counter program against your inner critic the upside of jealousy why action creates motivation not the other way around and much more with robin arzon after this quick break a few things before we hear from our sponsors today mark your calendars our summer sunday live series premieres in just a few weeks every sunday for eight weeks starting on july twelfth at four pm eastern you can join us for a live meditation and q and a hosted by the legendary meditation teacher sharon salzberg this is happening only over on my newish meditation app which is called ten percent with dan harris every sunday sharon's going to break down one part of a foundational buddhist list called the noble eightfold path you can think of the eightfold path as the buddhas cookbook for human happiness we will drop replays in the app if you missed the live sessions but it should be pretty fun to go to the live sessions themselves sharon will guide a meditation talk a little bit about one aspect of the eightfold path and then take your questions this is your chance to both learn from and be in conversation with a true buddhist master people always ask me how to get started in buddhism and i haven't had a great answer now i do take this course with sharon like i say it will be live in the app for eight weeks starting on july twelfth but you'll be able to take it anytime you want thereafter you can go to danharris dot com and sign up for the ten percent with dan harris app right now to start your free trial and we hope you will join the party we love what we're doing over in the app and we'd love to have you as part of it we'll be right back after this quick break if you carry physical tension that's hard to release tight shoulders a jaw you keep catching yourself clenching our sponsor by optimizers says magnesium supports the normal muscle relaxation process and that persistent tension is one of the things commonly reported when people fall behind on their daily intake they've got a formula called magnesium breakthrough that they say supports muscle function stress response and recovery and comes with a three hundred sixty five day money back guarantee as always talk to your doctor before starting any new supplement much more on this later to learn more though you can check out bioptimizers dot com happier use the code happier at checkout for fifteen percent off plus free gifts today robin arzon is here to talk about habits identity and how small daily things can compound and speaking of small daily things that compound i want to tell you about eight sleep they make a product called the pod which is a smart mattress cover that heats and cools your bed automatically and tracks your sleep without a wearable it's a habit that runs itself essentially which if you've ever tried to build a habit you know really is the dream if you want to check it out use the code danharris at eightsleep dot com danharris for up to dollar three hundred fifty off of the pod five robin arzon welcome to the show let's do this dan it's so funny to sit here and talk to you because i feel like i know you because i've taken so many rides with you i've only actually met you one other time but i'm sure you hear this all the time daily daily because you're in my life in such an intimate way but of course i don't know you
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Robin Arzon
and it's a very visceral experience like it's different than you know watching a movie or even watching a concert like you are physically active in that experience and so there's i mean there's a chemical thing that happens as well well
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Dan Harris
it's very cool to sit here with you i wanna talk about hustle hustle gets a bad rap i think deservedly these days because of hustle porn and this idea that you should you know rise and grind and push yourself to exhaustion never stop never stop but you have really made an effort to retake and redefine the word so can you say more about that my version of
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Robin Arzon
hustle includes boundaries includes rest i think my affection for the word hustle is because i center my work ethic and my values but it's they're mine they're not you know for somebody's accolade or you know what my business partner says or what somebody at peloton says like i think that it does require a certain level of confidence to embrace that word on your own terms and i recognize that you know structures and like kind of work culture doesn't necessarily afford that for folks that kind of maybe agency but that's where i want to push the envelope because i think i am tenacious i am kind of as an instructor and as a leader a little bit of i inject a lot of tough love i have very little tolerance for excuses and i think that's where my affection for hustle comes from but it's not leave yourself running into the ground based on somebody else's agenda and i use the power of no to protect my yes like a sword
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Dan Harris
say more about that what does that
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Robin Arzon
look like i say no to almost everything it's a miracle i'm sitting in
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Dan Harris
this chair yeah i was just gonna say
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Robin Arzon
look at you no i mean i really i really try especially since becoming a parent in the past few years i have two young kids i try to think well first of all when it comes to a social engagement if i wouldn't say yes today the answer is no i was kidding myself for a while that i was like oh in a month and two weeks in three months i'll totally wanna do that thing at seven pm or nine pm or oh my god i'm like i'm already asleep at nine so for social engagements if i wouldn't say yes immediately it's likely gonna be a no and then for business things i try to align my yeses with the energy of hell freaking yes like it's a high bar cause it's the kind of yes that like makes me want to leap out of my seat even if it's going to be really hard work
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Dan Harris
aka hustle the term full body yes have you ever heard about that yeah yeah that sounds like what your north
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Robin Arzon
star is it's like a full embodiment initial years of my career i think you know you say yes just to put in the reps and make the connections and that i think serves a purpose in your twenties and thirties or maybe just in the beginning of any any journey where you're really trying to you know put your name on it but now i'm at a point where i can be a little bit more
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Dan Harris
selective back to hustle you talk about the difference between intensity and volume because i think that's where a lot of people get stuck my old version of hustle personally was work till i couldn't function anymore and i think a lot of people do that they push themselves too hard and it the hustle backfires so can you just talk about the difference between intensity and volume volume begs
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Robin Arzon
the question are you busy or productive and when i look at my calendar i'm really proud that my current day calendar reflects who i am and what i'm about and i think a few years ago i don't know i don't necessarily think i could have stood by that where it was i felt the need to add things on my calendar just to say that my days were full and i was really conflating busyness with productiveness and i think for type a folks who like to like the checklist they like the gold star you know as a kid they were the straight a student or aspired to be of which i was definitely that energy checking things off my calendar for the sake of busyness felt like i was doing something and now i actually purposely create blocks on my calendar where i have nothing to do and that i find equally as rewarding now what do you do during that's creative thinking that's reading that's literally reading for pleasure it's the stack of magazines that somehow piles up every single month that i will just sit there and literally do do
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Dan Harris
that on like a tuesday yes really yes yeah i don't do that i will say i do my work schedule which i've really worked on over the years and i want to own both of us have a lot of agency that i think a lot of people listening don't and help but my work schedule does have chunks for meditation and working out but i don't do do and you're part of the ladder but i don't have like large unstructured blocks i it's interesting to think about but i i guess i part of my antipathy toward the word hustle is just internally i'm just constantly focused on checking off the next thing on my to do list and i don't like that energy in myself well i think for
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Robin Arzon
me hustle requires identifying what is important for you and i think other people's fire drills and perception of what is urgent will gobble up your important unless you decide it for yourself and so when i was defining what hustle looked like for me it was that it was like i'm propping up in my life what's important my calendar is gonna reflect that my actions are gonna reflect that my business commitments and my family commitments are gonna reflect that and i very rarely will respond to a quote unquote fire drill in the maybe in the way that others would like and i think it's that redlining that gets a little closer to other people's fire drills or our previous perceptions or what i think is an outdated perception of what hustle needs to be to be
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Dan Harris
clear i'm down with your definition of hustle but so let's just talk a little bit about folks who don't have some of the agency that you and i have how can we protect ourselves protect our energy and not be sucked into other people's priorities and fire drills as you say in a world where we have bosses and you know sometimes not a lot of choice yeah i
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Robin Arzon
get that i protect my mornings i do think sometimes it requires the sacrifice of not watching that additional netflix show you know the night before and when energy is misaligned it really does come down to the basics of how you're sleeping how you're fueling how you're moving and that is not it's gonna be a revelation to literally anyone listening to this we've heard it a million times but they're the what rituals and processes are we putting into place to make that happen and how are we telling the stakeholders in our lives including our kids and our family members and the people who are kind of just loving energy vampires about those priorities and especially if your habits are shifting and i used to be the person the fun person who used to go out at ten o' clock at night and it's like now i go to bed at eight pm and that's just who i
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Dan Harris
am now is that really who you
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Robin Arzon
are i'm in bed by nine i am asleep by nine eleven like nine eleven nine twelve according to my oura
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Dan Harris
ring asleep what time are you up five forty five six the communicating to the people in your life the setting of boundaries i think that's a hard thing for many people we're just uncomfortable with it we don't want to you know we'd rather say yes even though we don't want to say yes than do the hard thing and say no so do you have any thoughts or advice on how to communicate these boundaries to other people in a way that doesn't make you feel awful we practice
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Robin Arzon
the reps in low stakes environments right like i don't suggest you go to the ceo of your company and tell them you know can you reschedule all hands because that doesn't work for me but i do think that we can start with lower stakes environments and i do think when you frame the value proposition as you are going to get more out of me because this is how my energy system works or this is how my family life is you know what i mean like you you begin with the end in mind like what does success mean for the team for the company for the kpi's that are relevant to your life and then work backwards and i have had those conversations with bosses before and actually my peloton schedule you know has adapted over the years because of that it's like you are going to get more value from this piece of content if i'm filming during at this time rather than this time like i'm i'm not going to be good to anybody teaching at nine o' clock at night east coast time for our west coast you know viewers so those are little examples of
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Dan Harris
that a couple of other things i've heard you say that that i think really help redeem the word hustle one of them is the the idea that recovery is part of the deal it's not a reward it's a requirement can you say more about that i mean
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Robin Arzon
if you look at the most obvious examples or applications of recovery they are in our physical state and how how we need the recovery to grow muscle and it's actually not during the workout where you are making any of those adaptations it's later you know call it twelve to twenty four hours later when when the muscles are repairing when your energy system is repairing when your nervous system is is calming down and that piece of recovery was actually the long that was that was the hardest lesson i had to learn um cause i am a pretty high octane individual and up until having kids really i thought more is better harder has gotta be better like more additional difficult workouts have to be better and now i really have a much more polarized approach where i try to keep the hard days hard and the easy days easy not only in my training but i think in life to the extent we can control it and recovery is a huge piece of that which is why my bedtime is earlier than it's ever been in the past few years including having young kids and i've really created some boundaries around my evening routine and my morning routine and those are the hours that i can largely control like things that happen during business hours you know you're really you know at the mercy of what you do for a job but often but for me it's definitely worth going to bed early and waking up early and having those bookends to
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Dan Harris
my day just one more question on on on hustle from a slightly skeptical standpoint just trying to represent the audience here i hear from a lot of people that like self improvement has gotten really annoying to them and not only professionally but also personally everybody's telling them you got to track your steps track your sleep track your kpi's on peloton whatever get a personal record blah blah blah and there's an expression that i like the subtle aggression of self improvement so what do you say to people who feel like look i just i'm kind of depleted and so we're talking about you guys are talking about hustle and i really just want rest i
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Robin Arzon
get it i think that we we've optimized ourselves out of alignment in a lot of cases i actually just recently started wearing an oura ring and i will have days where i will check you know my stats and it'll like subtly enrage me because it'll be nudging things like don't you want to take a nap and it's like if only you know like thanks i didn't think of that right so there are things that i understand in this especially with the data dump that we're receiving constantly i believe that that's never that's not going away i mean we're only going to be receiving more and more and more of these data points but i do think that we can with things like meditation with things like movement practices turn the volume up on the conversation in between our ears and i do genuinely genuinely believe that should always be the loudest voice in the room and we have to find the processes that work for us that turn the volume up on that voice and for me for example i will delete social media for months at a time and i will only look at social media posts on a computer so i can actually manage that part of my business and that's like a boundary that i've created
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Dan Harris
for myself i did the same thing i deleted instagram from my phone because i was making myself so unhappy looking at it and so now somebody else will post it has been a gigantic lift to my spirits to not be looking all the time same i have a bunch more questions about the voice in the head because that is i know it's something you talk about our inner dialogue but actually the first time i met you the only time i met you you were filming an instagram video and you asked a really interesting and provocative question that has not left my mind the other person who you filmed in that conversation was peter attia who has had some pretty serious problems since then yes anyway so you came up to me and then i saw you do it with peter at new york times wellness conference and you asked what is the wellness thing such a good question what is the wellness trend hack or whatever that you personally skip and i'm curious what your answer to
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Robin Arzon
that question is the leaderboards like i skip the outward competition of trying to win the individual class as somebody who knows that like the peloton leaderboard is really motivating for folks or even race results are really motivating for folks i truly am only interested in competing with myself and i don't even look at that stuff so i would say like external validation of competition it's interesting i've
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Dan Harris
done the same thing i'm fifty four and i found that i was hurting myself a lot because i was going for personal records or i wasn't necessarily competing with other people on the board but i was pushing myself and pulling back a little bit and just doing the forty five minutes the forty five minute ride without eyeballing every single stat has reduced my injury load and actually made me enjoy the workout much more if you deal with occasional muscle tightness or cramping the kind that shows up after exercise or sometimes just out of nowhere our sponsor today by optimizers they say that that's one of the things that people often report when they're not consistently hitting their daily magnesium intake they say magnesium plays a key role in normal muscle function including muscle relaxation and that their formula may help ease muscle tension and support recovery most people they say simply are not getting enough magnesium through diet alone and their daily formula which is called magnesium breakthrough features seven different forms of magnesium each one they say supporting different functions muscle nerve function stress response sleep quality and recovery bioptimizers has been in this space for more than twenty years with phd developed formulas of course as i always say talk to your doctor before adding any new supplement to your routine but if you do want to explore it they offer a three hundred sixty five day no questions asked guarantee to learn more you can head to buyoptimizers dot com happier and use the code happier to get fifteen percent off any order you'll also receive free gifts and some extra savings automatically applied at checkout in your view as i understand it one of the big obstacles to hustle is the inner voice um can you tell me about the loudspeaker test i was on a
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Robin Arzon
run i was training for an ultra marathon at the time and i was i mean it was a really far run i was training for a hundred mile race and in training for that you basically do back to back long runs so that in one weekend i did a twenty mile run and a thirty mile run literally saturday sunday back to back and halfway through that second long run it was all the way up i passed the gwb in new york city it was just pretty far north from where i was living at the time actually not far from where we are right now in the east village and i just broke down my thoughts were super caustic like just you're a fraud you're never gonna finish this race and nearby was a soccer field and they were making all kinds of announcements on the loudspeaker and i had this re that if my thoughts were being played on that loudspeaker i would be mortified and this is coming from somebody who you know is in the motivation business and isn't telling folks that they can achieve and be and do all these things and it was really jarring to me to have that acute awareness that i was like my own thoughts were cutting me off at the knees and i started i kind of vowed to myself like i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna take these mental gymnastics and i'm gonna learn em and i started reading a ton i was already meditating at the time so i did have an awareness of my inner monologue but not but that's sitting you know on the floor or on the couch or in a chair it was it was the physical pain married with these really really horrible thoughts that really crystallized things
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Dan Harris
for me this kind of goes back to what we were talking about before with people's fatigue with self improvement and wellness because on the one hand like i get it i totally get it on the other hand some of the fatigue i think we have to look closely at it because it it can be undermining dressed up as self care or self love in other words you're telling yourself hey the culture is pushing me too hard which is true to a certain extent but it is also true that you do need to you know get your body moving and make sure you get enough sleep and so it's that balance between it's it's understanding like what is the right amount of skepticism we should bring to this and then what is it actually just my ego trying to keep me on the
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Robin Arzon
couch i completely understand that and i think that we always need a i i think we need an increasingly healthy dose of skepticism to see what works for us but this is where i always bring it back to the basics like you do need to sleep you do need to fuel you need to get your ass up and move and nobody's gonna do that for you and there's no way to delegate that and there's no gonna be there's not gonna be any ai machine nothing ai is never gonna make me feel how i feel when i lift a heavy barbell off the floor ever and it is that feeling of agency that powers my no power that tells me you are deserving of putting the phone down and going to bed at nine o' clock at night and there's a cascade to that confidence and those are the folks who are redefining hustle for themselves i
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Dan Harris
think that's the key redefining it for yourself what you just said there is crucial it's a marriage of something you said earlier which is you don't get sucked into other people's fire drills and listeners to this show don't need to follow somebody else's wellness program but you should figure it out for yourself and go for it both professionally and personally what do you do when the voice in your head is serving up really shitty undermining thoughts that is when i'm
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Robin Arzon
usually depleted and i didn't even realize it it normally happens when i'm on a book tour funnily enough more microphones more lights and i'm just like oh behind the scenes i feel like a terrible person just because i'm depleted u that's when i truly go back to basics basics like how much have you slept are you fueling how do you need you know a therapy session these are things that are very real conversations and i have a little checklist so i i affectionately call it my superhero toolkit and they're basics there are things that i'm sure that you've talked about on this podcast hundreds of times but when we are in the throes of it and cortisol is high and it feels like our body is foreign to us they're the last thing that we wanna do it's like okay yeah eye roll like yeah i'm supposed to drink a glass of lemon water gimme a freaking break the world is crumbling but sometimes it really is that simple so
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Dan Harris
for you there are moments when you're on a book tour and everybody's asking
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Robin Arzon
you questions well most recently most recently the last time i felt that way was on my book tour just because it it was a schedule that's usually later for me it involves travel i just had to adapt to the demands of those few weeks but for me that i could tell that i was
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Dan Harris
misaligned were you having kind of imposter
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Robin Arzon
thoughts i would say more so not imposter thoughts but i would say more so having moments where i was judging myself like you should be giving them more you should be a more expansive performative version of this because they expected more and just feeling maybe i guess a little bit of imposter but not imposter and like i don't i shouldn't be here more so like imposter like did that represent who you wanted to be in this appearance or what other people or what other people expected of it and sometimes i'll feel like you know somebody you see somebody on a plane and i'm just like oh my god i just i literally just want to sleep i don't necessarily want to have the fosse hands right now
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Dan Harris
you
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Robin Arzon
know what i mean jazz hands jazz
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Dan Harris
hands whatever it is meaning you don't want to put on a show for somebody who's a fan or maybe an acquaintance that you run into on a plane when you're exhausted and you're trying
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Robin Arzon
to take care of yourself sometimes and it's that last little bit of like five percent of battery life where i'm acutely aware of public expectations versus my own adapt adaptation energy and then i feel really guilty feel bad because i don't want anyone to have a bad interaction with me right and then you
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Dan Harris
get on the toilet and meaning like for me that the a friend of mine talks about this term the toilet vortex where you're hard on yourself take it out on other people you feel worse about yourself and then down you go yep seems like that sounds familiar in those moments i think i've heard you talk about talking to yourself as if you're talking to a different person
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Robin Arzon
yeah i think psychological distancing really helps i've played with self talk a ton in the first person i used to have a lot of mantras in the first person like i am strong i am capable and that is pretty good for me pre race but when i'm physically uncomfortable i actually find you works better so actually just this morning i was doing a rowing session that was pretty grueling it's actually called death by row so intuit what you will there and towards the end it got pretty gnarly and i didn't gravitate towards the i statements i gravitated towards the you statements and i imagined that it were that there were you know folks telling me that who i really respected who i've trained with before and that psychological distancing takes me out of the physical pain and back into like what are you capable if capable of in this
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Dan Harris
moment i find this stuff personally just endlessly fascinating psychological distancing i believe was developed by ethan cross from the university of michigan who's been on the show a bunch of times he's about to come on again who i who i just think is awesome and the idea that you can take this ability that we all have to be a good coach a good mentor a good parent and apply it to yourself in moments when you need it to me that's just kind of revolutionary beyond and i
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Robin Arzon
think it's so amazing that once you start to practice it in real world environments for you it is absolutely a transferable skill like i can take that same of course i apply it often in athletic context but you can take that same skill set and apply it when your kid's having a tantrum or you're about to you know have a tough argument with your spouse or it
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Dan Harris
transfers you mentioned something earlier about mantras how often do you use them what
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Robin Arzon
are they for me they are pressure tested phrases that i have created rituals around usually in training for me it's something that i have to repeat and do hundreds of times and really try to anchor it in the desired state so i'll give you an example before i deadlift there's like a physical trigger for me i will actually this is gonna sound really i've actually never told anybody this it's gonna sound so extreme to your audience but i i will like slap my thighs and stomp the ground and tell myself be here and that be here is like be be here like focus on pulling this bar off the ground and the physical slapping and stomping is literally contributing to me bracing my core and breathing in and just being ready and you might even observe you know folks will observe like aaron judge like throwing dirt before he's gonna you know do do something specific on the ball field and like a lot of a lot of athletes have these sequences for me it involves both physical and mantra based so a statement
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Dan Harris
it doesn't seem honestly that extreme to me first of all be here is going to resonate with every meditator everywhere second the stomping the ground kind of reminds me of like ever seen those the indigenous folks from new zealand the maori they do these kind of like dances yeah that's what comes to mind when i hear you describe it yeah
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Robin Arzon
and there actually is something so guttural like ancestral about and i'm wearing lifting shoes so they have a hard soul and when they connect with the ground i imagine it's almost like a tap shoe like it's like you're here so i hear that and i'm like let's
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Dan Harris
freaking rock and roll that seems scalable to lots of activities in life be here like i gotta go have a hard conversation be here whatever and it
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Robin Arzon
also helps with the catastrophizing of like well what if this happens and then what if this happens and what if i don't it's just like be here what are you going to control go
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Dan Harris
do it i was freaking out recently and i was i don't know i was just kind of in a spiral on something and my wife said you should call joseph goldstein who's my meditation teacher which i recognize is super privileged that i can call this guy and i did call the guy and we're talking about something that the dalai lama once said which is that if you if there's something you can do about the problem there's nothing to worry about right you should just do the thing and if there's nothing you can do about the problem there's also nothing to worry about and i'd heard that a million times it never really resonated with me because i'm so attached to worry as a mo which has not served me well honestly or maybe has sometimes served me well but usually tips over into stupidity now though i'm realizing like just break the problem into manageable parts and if there's nothing to do about it just write it off i find
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Robin Arzon
that the the paralysis of worry feels like it's productive i'm so action oriented to a fault perhaps that worry doesn't stand a chance i truly use action as the antidote to those feelings of
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Dan Harris
of anxiety yes as often i didn't coin this phrase but i often say action absorbs anxiety i also often fail to live up to it because i will get stuck in the paralysis or the loop or the loop yes a couple other questions about aspects of inner talk that i've heard you talk about one thing i've heard you say is using jealousy as data there's a kind of there's a way we can co
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Robin Arzon
opt our absolutely you should notice when you have those moments of oh i wish i had that and i don't mean like i wish i had that person's you know bag or shoes or whatever it's more i think it's more when you're observing a family construct or a social environment or an aptitude for something you know you see somebody who's effervescent and social and you're like oh i wish i could be like him i wish i could be like her and at least that's how when i observe it in myself when i see folks with qualities that i wish i had or life aspects of their life work life social social life or personal life that i wish i had and i really used to feel this when i was practicing law and i would notice friends who were perhaps in more creative fields and they had more control over their time or what i you know this is all perception i perceive them to have not a care in the world and they could you know go to you know read for ninety minutes on a tuesday if they wanted and i really craved that freedom and instead of shutting that down i actually used i observed for a few years when i was planning to leave law i actually observed those moments and then i used them to help paint the picture of where i wanted to land even if i didn't necessarily have the path to get there yet i knew how i wanted to feel because i was jealous of other folks who i perceived to be already feeling that or experiencing those things yeah so instead of
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Dan Harris
getting stuck in useless unhealthy jealousy you were like oh no this is pointing me where i need to go correct
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Robin Arzon
and i do think it's a clue and especially if it happens more than once i think that's your intuition the whispers that we hear are often the biggest clues that we ignore and i think when we're thinking about passion and you know find your passion i mean i believe that the success leaves clues and whispers and it's up to you whether you're going to go all in
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Dan Harris
or not related to jealousy as data i think you've also talked about this idea of like why not me i
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Robin Arzon
ask myself that and journal about it every month probably every every quarter for sure when i'm doing my vision board
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Dan Harris
say more about what what that means
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Robin Arzon
well i think that we often view greatness and achievement as other and we are absorbing and inheriting lots of historical context of what we are capable of and i especially think i don't know as a mom as someone in their forties it's for sure changing a lot of those narratives that i feel like i've inherited but when one feels stuck i think that's a very helpful question to ask why not you to get unstuck why not you to become that person that has never done that thing again a lot of sports analogies because that's what my world is but you know you've got two people just broke world records at the london marathon you know getting subbed two hours why not them right and now there's going to be a cascade of folks who do that because they that broke that bubble of potential and that's an extreme example right like the top of a sport in human history but we can scale that and make it apply to our everyday lives and i think the goal setting anytime we're goal setting that has to be a central question why not
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Dan Harris
you i'm curious just personally curious listening to you talk about your goal setting vision board striving for greatness like what's what's on there now like what are you what are your goals that's interesting
- [37:19]
Robin Arzon
because i just released if you would have asked me this a year and a half ago when i was creating my cookbook it would have been my cookbook because i thought oh my gosh there's no way as somebody who's not a classically trained chef i'm going to be able to have a cookbook that is received and it's vegan right it's a plant based cookbook it felt like the little engine they could and it did make the the new york times bestseller list and i was so deeply proud of that because i didn't think it was possible at all like i was like just there's just no chance and that's okay i'm gonna i i poured so much love into that project not thinking it was gonna get some you know button of achievement on the other side i genuinely did it because i wanted to bring folks into my home and into my kitchen and my and my point of view on fueling intentionally as a plant based athlete now for this year i am giving myself the freedom of not having a short list of i gotta do this and i gotta do that you know there are unscripted projects that i want to pursue you know my husband and i have a have a media company swagger studios and we have some seeds that we're planting i always want to continue expanding into the lifestyle space beauty fashion but it's not like i think that you have to let things breathe and i think i want to pursue things out of hunger not thirst and i'm just waiting for a few pangs of
- [38:39]
Dan Harris
hunger it's admirable in my view that you can wait instead of just hurling yourself into the next thing because there has to be a next thing i'm
- [38:48]
Robin Arzon
so aware of energy as currency my own energy as currency and i the and the projects that i work on now i want them to really reflect that hell yes and if i'm just going into the next thing of like oh okay well i'm an author now so now i should do this or now i'm in i wrote a cookbook so shouldn't i do this and it's like wait do i want to do does the world want me to like what are we and that pressure i actually think people don't talk enough about the pressure of creating the next hit because success can be just as intimidating as getting to that first successful point and i'm just gonna reclaim my agency back and do it on my terms
- [39:31]
Dan Harris
meaning just you don't feel like every next thing you do has to succeed just because you've succeeded in the past you're willing to do things that might be out of the box or not guaranteed to succeed because that's what you
- [39:44]
Robin Arzon
want to do correct or and especially in environments industries verticals where i'm not expected to be there and it's like but i am so high i think
- [39:58]
Dan Harris
a lot of people listening to this might be like you know where does where do you get the courage to do that because yeah i think a lot of us struggle with you know finding the audacity i do think some
- [40:12]
Robin Arzon
of that comes from my parents i they both have pretty audacious stories i'm a first generation latina my dad was born in puerto rico and grew up in the bronx my mom is a cuban refugee born in cuba and came over in her teenage years not speaking a lick of english and so their stories are really when i think about their stories and i hear them tell it like how dare i not like truly and i my kids better be audacious like i didn't work this hard for them to cower in the corner like you better find your thing i think that i walk into rooms with a straight spine because i genuinely think i have a thousand abuelas behind me being like why we didn't go through all that for you to cower in the corner and even if the energy you know of my kids for example is softer is subtler is you know it doesn't have to be loud but
- [41:02]
Dan Harris
it's gotta be yours it's interesting this i this thousand abuelos thing because i think i've heard you say it in
- [41:08]
Robin Arzon
rides i think about it all the
- [41:10]
Dan Harris
time i think the old me who was nihilistically skeptical and sarcastic i'm still a lot of that but i think that idea of like conjuring your ancestors might i might not have groked it but now i really do the idea that my family tree is actually not super dignified lots of depressed anxious people who you know like one of my ancestors was a deserter from the civil war so i don't know how much strength i generate necessarily from all of my ancestors but the idea that you do have a wind at your sails and there are a lot of actual people in my ancestral line who did amazing things and it's not that they're ne not necessarily that i have a metaphysical belief that they're here with me right now but i can conjure them to produce a tailwind i think that's kind of what you're pointing at well
- [42:07]
Robin Arzon
i mean i do have spiritual beliefs that they you know kind of are around me and i see signs of it but i choose to see signs of it but even if you don't it's not necessarily that for me that i look back and all of them were perfect icons and you know they were you know written into the history books i actually think in some ways i'm doing things differently and i'm breaking ancestral curses and lines and that they're looking at me being like yeah exactly because you stepped into your purpose and like folks who follow me in my lineage are gonna be like yeah i did it differently because she messed up in that way and here we are and i actually think that that's a
- [42:41]
Dan Harris
beautiful thing i mean i i guess i don't have faith metaphysically you know i can't pound the table and say my grandpa sam is in this room
- [42:50]
Robin Arzon
right now well this isn't going to be a medium reading don't worry i've
- [42:55]
Dan Harris
done that on the show i have but actually in part doing having a medium on the show and knowing people in my life who i do take seriously who do take that seriously it hasn't imbued in me some sort of dogmatic belief that it's true but it's a kind of openness to like yeah okay so if grandpa sam who was a lovely man but flawed and i think cut off a few of his fingers to avoid going to world war two and like used to have bouts of depression and was unable to get out of the bed he did the best he could in the circumstances in which he came up in viciously anti semitic america in the nineteen twenties and thirties and forties and he and a patriarchal not very psychologically oriented society with a guy who is clearly neurodivergent he did his best and so the best version of him is on the other side maybe if you want to say that cheering me on thinking okay this guy has is doing a better job and had more resources yeah and what's
- [43:58]
Robin Arzon
the harm in that i guess that's where i approach it like if it helps me go into a business meeting and ask for more money good if i'm able to speak a truth that resonates to somebody at peloton and then they walk into you know their business meeting with more confidence good and i know that i'm here to light fires in people's lives and that makes me really proud to contribute to that energy like somebody needs a friend in the group chat that's gonna be writing in all caps and guess what that's me
- [44:34]
Dan Harris
you always know when robin has entered the chat because it's caps lock or
- [44:38]
Robin Arzon
at least one or two exclamation points
- [44:41]
Dan Harris
i imagine you using a lot of emojis too like fire emoji i do
- [44:45]
Robin Arzon
i do but i like to i do not like the trend of being grammatically incorrect i use punctuation which probably really dates me as a elder millennial
- [44:57]
Dan Harris
right well i'm even as established older than that i cannot stand misspelling and especially in an era of like autocorrect like we should be able to get this right a word from eight sleep before we get back to robin for anybody working on habit formation the hardest part of any habit is showing up every day especially the ones with no immediate payoff sleep can be the worst offender in this regard you cannot will yourself into deep sleep you can't even tell in the moment whether you got any the pod which is a product made by our sponsor today eight sleep is a smart mattress cover that goes on top of your existing mattress it heats and cools each side of the bed independently and automatically anywhere from fifty five to one hundred ten degrees the ai which is called autopilot learns your patterns night to night and adjusts on its own you don't have to remember to do anything you just sleep what i like about this when i think about it in the frame of habits is that it's the rare habit you don't actually have to manually recommit to every night the system runs itself and every morning you get a clean read on how you actually slept which makes the invisible habit visible and the way they report it is very elegant it's on an app on your phone as mentioned you don't have to wear anything it just tracks it for you right there on your phone and it really gives you a sense of how you're doing so that you can make better decisions and get better sleep and the fact that it cools your body down and then actually if you set it the right way will warm you back up in the morning you can also set an alarm and it will gently vibrate to wake you up in a way that isn't super jarring and if like me you're a snorer it actually can raise your head up so that changes your airways and can reduce the likelihood of snoring it's really quite an amazing product my wife my son and i are all marveling over it in the days since we received it you can use the code danharris at eightsleep dot com danharris for up to dollar three hundred fifty off the pod five thirty day trial if it's not for you okay the last bucket of questions i have for you is about motivation one of your arguments is that motivation is not a prerequisite for action like the action can precede the motivation can you just say more about that i
- [47:23]
Robin Arzon
mean i'll say much more i think motivation is absolute nonsense i think that we feel entitled to motivation and we really really need to recalibrate that we feel like we're gonna have this overwhelming emotion or state of being of feeling motivated to take action when it's the action that creates the momentum and it's the momentum that creates the feeling of motivation and sometimes that motivation never comes sometimes you are going through the motions and that feeling of motivation never comes and i experienced that all the time in my own workouts and as somebody who does that professionally for a living i can assure you that waiting for the feeling of motivation you're likely going to be stuck so you have to
- [48:12]
Dan Harris
start anyway i mentioned joseph goldstein earlier my meditation teacher who's been a massive impact on me who has had a massive impact on me he teaches in these little expressions these kind of pithy phrases and one of them is effort
- [48:26]
Robin Arzon
creates energy love that and i mean it's scientifically true i think and we i hear the motivation myth most often from folks who haven't even tried yet or tried for a week you know especially in a movement context tried for a week tried for two weeks and then they fall off it's like what would happen if you stopped giving up you wouldn't be waiting for motivation let's
- [48:55]
Dan Harris
talk about a movement context because exercise is this thorny area for many people they just like just can't get their shit together to do it and i don't have that problem for me if i don't do it the stakes are so high because i'll just get depressed and anxious and so i know that i need to do it so i don't struggle with motivation but i have a lot of sympathy for people who do struggle with that motivation so what would you say what do you say to the thousands of people who come up to you and say like yeah i love you on peloton but i just can't get my ass on the bike or my feet on the tread practically how do you do it if you don't have the motivation lower the
- [49:34]
Robin Arzon
barrier to entry instead of telling yourself it has to be whatever you perceived it a sixty minute tough thing or even a thirty minute you know moderately tough thing make it five i would rather see somebody do get back like create less breaks in the chain and for me personally i don't have more than two breaks in the chain i haven't taken you know more than two days off you know except for the you know birth of my two kids and that's because i lower the barrier to entry i'm not asking folks to you know leap onto a tall building it's like can you jump onto a shoebox probably most days and liberating ourselves from the preconceived notion of what a quality workout looks like i encourage folks to create a minimum a minimally viable movement practice that they can do on most days and when folks are goal setting you know they say i'm gonna be the five am workout person but they're doing it like at seven pm over cocktails and dinner and they feel great like do set your alarm at four thirty in the morning on monday and then decide what the goal is going to be like make the goal when you're in the state with the potential barriers to you know with the
- [50:51]
Dan Harris
potential friction this thing you said about lowering the bar as you know there's a lot of evidence for this there's tons of research around like what works in habit formation and we should say from the jump habit formation is diabolically difficult the i think skeleton key for all of this that unlocks it is exactly what you said do it sometimes people recommend for running for example just start by putting your shoes near the door or go around the block with meditation i often say start with one minute and just just and also daily ish doesn't have to be every day but don't as you say don't miss two days in a row this mixture of structure with doability is i think and the evidence seems to support this the route to establishing an abiding habit
- [51:42]
Robin Arzon
yeah like don't let perfectionism enter the conversation because that's when you give yourself the out and then it becomes oh well i didn't do any of this in the ways that i the exact perfect way that i envisioned so now let me just throw it all out it's like no claw back to one you know one semblance what what is what is a shade of what you were trying to paint with like that i would like to see people do
- [52:09]
Dan Harris
more often what are your thoughts on the fresh start effect the the idea that we can harness the power of mondays or a new year or a new month or a birthday to get
- [52:20]
Robin Arzon
ourselves moving use it and then plan for the messy middle using monday as the example you use it like when like when you feel motivated when you have that fresh start when it's monday when it's january first when it's your birthday use it but plan the schedule and the routine for the wednesday at three pm when you know you are not going to feel great and make that the basis of your practice and what can you know i will i will leave notes for myself like i will write things in my notes app and actually paste them into my calendar for the days that i know it's gonna be like you're not gonna want to and that like plan for it plan to not feel like it instead of pretending like you're always gonna feel
- [53:09]
Dan Harris
like it a couple of much of what you just said is also backed up by the evidence one of the other conclusions that kind of comes screaming out of the data around the research into behavior change as i understand it is flexibility is really important like planning for the messy middle in a way that like okay you might feel like shit so maybe that's the day that you're going to do less and so you you have this elasticity in the system that allows you to succeed in a lasting way and then the other thing is and we talked about this earlier but self compassion or positive self talk having an inner coach instead of an inner drill sergeant is a great way to keep yourself motivated without burning
- [53:51]
Robin Arzon
yourself out the elasticity piece of it is so beautiful because it also takes into account these elements of burnout that we were talking about like you might have the time to do what you planned in terms of movement but your nervous system might be on the fritz like women hormonally like might be going through a lot like your kids might have been up you're you know you don't know what life is gonna throw at you but that minimum viable link in the chain goes a long way into bridging towards the identity of someone who keeps the promises they make to themselves and i think that that is is worth the effort i have worked
- [54:31]
Dan Harris
my way through my voluminous list of questions for you um what did i miss anything anything you were hoping to talk about or would like to talk about that we didn't get to like what's on your mind these days that we didn't that i didn' about well
- [54:44]
Robin Arzon
what is on my mind lately is using breath i am a longtime meditator and now i'm exploring ways in which breath work could more easily get me into different desired states so it's not just necessarily the mantra or the slapping of the thigh but it's like how can i train myself through different breath work to get into what i know is you know i know if i get into my you know start saying my mantra and it's a vedic meditation practice like i can be in that state pretty quickly now and it's like okay like how can i have a cheat code into different desired states and especially as a parent kind of using the physicality of parenting to be a
- [55:29]
Dan Harris
better parent i think you have toddlers
- [55:31]
Robin Arzon
i have a toddler a five year old and two year old okay so
- [55:33]
Dan Harris
a toddler and a kindergartner and you're being pulled in two different directions simultaneously by two little rugrats and maybe you're losing your patience maybe you're tired whatever in a moment like that you can do kind of like breathwork like free
- [55:52]
Robin Arzon
range breath work yeah but also it's the other way it's if i get home and i'm tired and i can use breath work to like oxygenate and maybe similar to like a wim hof or something type of method that people might be familiar with i'm sure people are familiar with to give them the twenty minutes they just want with me on the floor and that's where my mind has been going lately is like how i spend so much time training for races it's like how can i make this applicable to create more meaning in the moments that matter for me and that's having energy you know for
- [56:25]
Dan Harris
my kids how does the breath work
- [56:27]
Robin Arzon
work so usually i'm still figuring out a process around it but if my husband is home or if our nanny is home it's like me going into my into the bedroom for ten minutes to like try to lie down and do more like breath of fire type stuff and then coming out and having a little bit more energy for for
- [56:45]
Dan Harris
them i don't actually know what breath
- [56:47]
Robin Arzon
of fire is so i think it's i mean i think it's like a yoga a yogic practice where i mean you're essentially like i'm like by the end of it i'm like literally sweating i don't know i couldn't explain it to you because i have to bring up videos and stuff to actually do it but it's energizing let's just say
- [57:03]
Dan Harris
that i was talking to my shrink the other day and he was recommending i think it's four seven eight breathing developed by this guy doctor andrew weil who i don't know andrew you should come on the show where you it's an inhale count of four hold for seven seconds and then breathe out through your mouth with your tongue behind your front teeth and you just do that a bunch of times and apparently it kind of like resets your nervous system
- [57:37]
Robin Arzon
that's kind of a calming yeah i
- [57:38]
Dan Harris
think it's a calming thing so wouldn't it's it sounds like it'd be quite
- [57:41]
Robin Arzon
different well listen there are a lot of paths to it and i think that's what's so cool and that's just where my curiosity is right now can
- [57:48]
Dan Harris
you be teaching peloton in say twenty
- [57:52]
Robin Arzon
years yeah cause i plan to be a ninety year old baddie being able to deadlift my husband and you're welcome
- [57:59]
Dan Harris
to join me can you deadlift him
- [58:02]
Robin Arzon
now yes more than him more than i could deadlift him plus have you
- [58:06]
Dan Harris
actually deadlifted him i wouldn't subject him
- [58:10]
Robin Arzon
to that but his equivalent in weight is kind of where the joke came
- [58:14]
Dan Harris
from got it okay yeah i'm sure my wife would like to do a lot of things to me but probably
- [58:21]
Robin Arzon
not that listen i want i really
- [58:24]
Dan Harris
do
- [58:26]
Robin Arzon
we're all steeped in the longevity game right now and how we want to play it is up to us but i think peloton is a pioneer and a leader in the space in making it accessible and efficient and we are increasingly informing ourselves as instructors i'm as head instructor and with a team of training specialists we're really trying to marry the technology with stuff that makes sense in people's lives and you're not
- [58:51]
Dan Harris
going anywhere i'm glad to hear that because i use it all the time can you also just remind everybody of the names of your books and also
- [58:58]
Robin Arzon
your podcast yes so my podcast is project swagger your weekly transformation toolkit in thirty minutes or less my most recent book is eat to hustle it's a plant based protein pack to cookbook directly from my kitchen with recipes that i have pressure tested over twelve years of being a plant based athlete i have two children's books strong baby and strong mama with a lot of the values that you've heard today and i have a journal called welcome hustler with prompts that i used to transition from law to wellness and my very first book was shut up and run which is a running manual robin yes thank you
- [59:37]
Dan Harris
thank you appreciate it here's a question i've been sitting with why do so many people feel like their body is working against them carrying tension they can't shake running low on energy no matter how much they sleep getting hit by mental fog at inconvenient moments our sponsor bioptimizers makes the case that for a lot of people part of the answer is a nutrient gap speaking specifically magnesium they say magnesium is involved in more than three hundred enzymatic processes in the body energy production muscle and nerve function the kind of deep regulation that keeps systems running smoothly when people don't consistently hit their daily magnesium intake the effects can be surprisingly wide ranging physical tension that won't release uneven energy a general sense of being run down a harder time winding down at night most people they argue are not getting enough magnesium through diet alone and that is the premise behind their product magnesium breakthrough their daily formula featuring seven different forms of magnesium each one they say supporting a different function muscle and nerve function stress response sleep quality energy production and recovery the idea is that covering more of these bases matters bioptimizers has been around for more than twenty years with phd developed formulas and a serious track record not a brand that appeared overnight chasing a random wellness trend as i always say here when it comes to supplements if you're thinking about adding anything new to your routine please talk to your doctor first that's just the right call in the smart call but if you decide you want to explore it they've got a three hundred sixty five day no questions asked money back guarantee so a full year to decide if it's worth working for you and when you order through buyoptimizers dot com happier you'll get exclusive bonuses automatically added to your cart not something you get on amazon or in stores head to bioptimizers dot com happier and use the code happier you'll get fifteen percent off any order plus free gifts applied automatically at checkout thank you so much for listening to or watching the show and thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show a reality ten percent happier is produced by tara anderson and eleanor vasily our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at pod people lauren smith is our managing producer marissa schneiderman is our senior producer dj cashmere is our executive producer and nick thorburn of the bad islands wrote our theme also one last thing before you go remember to sign up for my app which is called ten percent with dan harris you can sign up for the app over on danharris dot com on the app you'll find a growing library of meditations from many of the world's greatest meditation teachers ad free access to this podcast and our voluminous back catalog exclusive live stream events and robust discussion threads connect with me and with our teachers and our team and one another there's a free fourteen day trial if you want to try before you buy